On the table in the salon stood an old-fashioned chimney clock with a fiendish figure in bronze biting his thumb. This demon grinned sarcastically at all the negotiations which led to the treaties with the South German States, the proclamation of the German Emperor and Empire, and afterwards to the surrender of Paris and the preliminaries of peace, all of which were signed in this salon, thus securing it a place in the world’s history.
The billiard-room was arranged as an office for the councillors, secretaries, and decipherers. In January, when there was a severe frost, a portion of the winter garden was assigned to the officers on guard. The library was occupied by orderlies and Chancery attendants.
The principal staircase led to a second hall, which received a dim light from a square flat window let into the roof. The doors of the Minister’s two rooms opened off this hall. Neither of them was more than ten paces by seven. One of these, the window of which opened on the garden, served at the same time as study and bed-chamber, and was very scantily furnished.
The other chamber, which was somewhat better furnished, although not at all luxuriously, served, in addition to the salon on the ground floor, for the reception of visitors. During the negotiations for the capitulation of Paris it was put at the disposal of Jules Favre for his meditations and correspondence.
Count Bismarck-Bohlen had a room to the left of the Chancellor’s, which also opened on the park and garden, Abeken having the opposite room looking on the street. Bölsing had a small chamber near the back-stairs, while I was lodged on the second floor over Bohlen’s room.
The park behind the house, though not large, was very pretty, and there during the bright autumn nights the tall figure and white cap of the Chancellor was frequently to be seen passing from the shade into the moonlight as he slowly strolled about. What was the sleepless man pondering over? What ideas were revolving through the mind of that solitary wanderer? What plans were forming or ripening in his brain during those still midnight hours?
It will be seen that the whole Field Foreign Office was not quartered at Madame Jesse’s. Lothar Bucher had a handsome apartment in the Avenue de Paris, Keudell and the decipherers were lodged in a house somewhat higher up than ours in the Rue de Provence, and Count Hatzfeldt lived in the last house on the opposite side of the way. There was some talk on several occasions of providing the Chancellor with more roomy and better furnished lodgings, but the matter went no further, possibly because he himself felt no great desire for such a change, and perhaps also because he liked the quiet which prevailed in the comparatively retired Rue de Provence.
During the day, however, this stillness was less idyllic than many newspaper correspondents described it at the time. I am not thinking of the fifes and drums of the troops that marched through the town and which reached our ears almost daily, nor of the noise which resulted from two sorties made by the Parisians in our direction, nor even of the hottest day of the bombardment, as we had become accustomed to all that, much as the miller does to the roar and rattle of his wheels. I refer principally to the numerous visitors of all kinds, many of them unwelcome, who were received by the Chancellor during those eventful months. Our quarters was often like a pigeon house from the constant flow of strangers and acquaintances in and out. At first non-official eavesdroppers and messengers came from Paris, followed later by official negotiators in the persons of Favre and Thiers, accompanied by a larger or smaller retinue. There were princely visitors from the Hôtel des Reservoirs. The Crown Prince came several times, and the King once. The Church was also represented amongst the callers by high dignitaries, archbishops, and other prelates. Deputations from the Reichstag, individual party leaders, higher officials, and bankers arrived from Berlin, while Ministers came from Bavaria and other South German States for the purpose of concluding treaties. American generals, members of the foreign diplomatic body in Paris, including a “coloured gentleman,” and envoys of the Imperialist party wished to speak to the busy statesman in his small room upstairs, and, as a matter of course, English newspaper correspondents eagerly tried to force their way into his presence. Then there were Government couriers with their despatch bags, Chancery attendants with telegrams, orderlies with messages from the general staff, and besides all these a superfluity of work which was as difficult as it was important. In short, what with deliberating on old schemes and forming new ones, seeking how to overcome difficulties, vexation and trouble, the disappointment of well-grounded expectations, now and then a lack of support and readiness to meet his views, the foolish opinions of the Berlin press and their dissatisfaction notwithstanding our undreamt of success, together with the agitation of the Ultramontanes, it was often hard to understand how the Chancellor, with all these calls upon his activity and patience, and with all this disturbance and friction, was, on the whole, able to preserve his health and maintain that freshness which he showed so frequently late in the evening in conversations both serious and humorous. During his stay at Versailles he was only once or twice unwell for three or four days.
The Minister allowed himself little recreation—a ride between 3 and 4 o’clock, an hour at table with half an hour for the cup of coffee which followed it in the drawing-room, and now and then, after 10 P.M., a longer or shorter chat at the tea-table with whoever happened to be there, and a couple of hours sleep after daybreak. The whole remainder of the day was devoted to business, studying or writing in his room, or in conversations and negotiations,—unless a sortie of the French or some other important military operation called him to the side of the King, or alone to some post of observation.
Nearly every day the Chancellor had guests to dinner, and in this way we came to see and hear almost all the well-known and celebrated men prominently connected in the war. Favre repeatedly dined with us, reluctantly at first, “because his countrymen within the walls were starving,” but afterwards listening to wise counsel and exhortation and doing justice like the rest of us to the good things of the kitchen and cellar. Thiers, with his keen intelligent features, was on one occasion amongst the guests, and the Crown Prince once did us the honour to dine at our table, when such of the Chief’s assistants as were not previously known to him were presented. At another time Prince Albrecht was present. Of the Minister’s further guests, I will here only mention Delbrück, President of the Bundeskanzleiamt, who was frequently in Versailles for weeks at a time, the Duke of Ratibor, Prince Putbus, von Bennigsen, Simson, Bamberger, Friedenthal and von Blankenburg, the Bavarian Ministers Count Bray and von Lutz, the Würtemberg Ministers von Wächter and Mittnacht, von Roggenbach, Prince Radziwill, and finally Odo Russell, who was subsequently British Ambassador to the German Empire. When the Chief was present the conversation was always lively and varied, while it was frequently instructive as illustrating his manner of regarding men and things, or as throwing light upon certain episodes and incidents of his past life.